Would You Pay $3 Million for a Shelby 427 Competition Cobra?

Say you win the lottery: what do you go spend your winnings on? This Shelby 427 Competition Cobra, offered by RM Auctions at its Arizona sale later this month, makes an extremely compelling case for itself.

Shelby built 23 427 Competition Cobras, which made their debut in 1965. The original Cobra – equipped with Ford's 289 cubic inch V8 – was fast, but Ferraris and Corvettes were catching up. Shelby's solution? Install a 427 cubic inch V8 in a redesigned chassis and call it a day.

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This example, Chassis number CSX 3010, is the 10th 427 Competition Cobra built and is said to make 620 horsepower. That's a ton of horsepower in any car, but in a Cobra that weighs just 2,420 pounds, it's obscene.

RM Auctions

In 1968, this car won the SCCA A Production Championship and the 1971 Eastern Canadian Endurance Championship. Having crashed out of a race in 1971, this Cobra was rebuilt in 1978 and further restored in 2014 with a new engine installed. It's unclear what happened to the original engine though RM's listing notes it was sold without and engine after it was crashed.

It's not numbers-matching, but with 620 horsepower, does it really matter? This car could easily dominate any vintage race it's entered in. Amazingly, this Cobra is street legal too – its current owner has participated in various 1,000-mile tours with it.

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Personally, I'm more a fan of the earlier 289 Cobras, but this car, especially in this color, is very hard to argue with. Is it worth your imaginary lottery winnings?

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